Built-in Download Manager for MacOS X

Do you need that download manager without requiring to install additional softwares that just eat into your precious hard disk space?

All versions of OSX actually come with a copy of a download manager known popularly as ‘curl’ built into the Command Line Interface. To use it, there is nothing more needed other than a very small segment of your brain’s memory power, or this guide.

2) Next fire up Terminal and you should be confronted with an intimidating screen that appears something like this:

3) For old timers familiar with the MS-DOS interface of C:\> most will smile readily but for new timers to the world of Command Line Interface, they will get pretty intimidated. But no worries. Simply type the following line to download your file:The line is: curl -C – -O “http://www.xxx.com/123.dmg&#8221;
[That is a capital letter ‘C’ and a capital letter ‘O’ for ‘Orange’]

4) You should be downloading the file into your main user folder at this point after you hit Return.

5) In any case the connection breaks for some reason, you should be able to resume the download by typing this command: curl -C – -O -R “http://www.xxx.com/123.dmg&#8221;
[That is a capital ‘C’ for Cat, capital ‘O’ for ‘Orange’ with a capital ‘R’ for ‘Resume’]

6) To exit from the Terminal program after you had finished downloading everything, simply close the program.

NOTE ABOUT USING CURL: The link required must be a direct pointer to the file in the web or ftp server and not a redirect link as curl doesn’t work very well on redirect links.